Infrastructure projects are vital to improving communities. But without the input of residents themselves, these projects can miss the mark.
Traditional outreach methods like community engagement meetings are not always easy for residents to attend. To overcome barriers to connection, civil engineers need to find creative, effective ways to get people involved.
During a recent Thursdays@3 roundtable on inclusive design, civil engineers discussed various methods for bringing community voices into infrastructure projects. Find out below what their personal outreach experiences have taught them about community engagement.
Michele Heyward, EIT, A.M.ASCE
Founder of PositiveHire; Denmark, South Carolina
“Community engagement meetings aren't necessarily held during the best times for most people. We think, ‘We're at work, so why don't we just convene a community engagement meeting during our workday?’ Well, it's oftentimes during other people's workday. Or, if we host it in the evening, it might not be at a location that has access to public transportation.
“One of my approaches has been to go where the people are as opposed to where we want them to come to. What does that look like? Most people go shopping on Saturday for groceries, so we could host meetings somewhere near where they’ll shop. Some people are going to worship on a certain day, and we generally don't get them involved or they don't show up for our community engagement meetings, so we can shift to folk events and host those types of community engagement.
“We really need to think about how to go out and approach the public to get them engaged in spaces where they're comfortable going so we can have these conversations with them.”
Ted Green, P.E., M.ASCE
Adjunct faculty at Rutgers University; Kendall Park, New Jersey
“I witnessed in person that reaching out to the community makes a big difference during one of the ASCE conventions. I was in Anaheim, California, a few years ago on a tour of the new Orange County light rail system, which will open next year.
“At the time, they had been tearing up the streets in Santa Ana, and they had a person who was bilingual – since most of the shop owners on these streets in Santa Ana are Latino – who they worked with. She saw us on the tour, and they asked her when the street would be opened up. She told them it was going to be open Monday afternoon. You couldn't have seen a group of people happier to have that information.
“The county had worked with the shop owners. They would do one street at a time, certain blocks at a time, so it’s not too disruptive. They always kept sidewalks open, so everybody always had access to the shops. It was something that you could see happening in person.
“Normally as engineers, we don't see it at that level because we're in an office someplace. We just don't watch that. When it's successful, you do see it.”
